


Let Me Come Back To Your Hand

by Razzaroo



Series: the thing with feathers [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 00:18:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14296611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: ' “Dogs are more loyal,” Gwydion says, “And a hawk never loves its falconer.” ' The Warden comes and goes; Alistair trusts him to always come back to him in the end.





	Let Me Come Back To Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, you just have to write self indulgent, borderline ship fic about Alistair and your Warden with an overhanging bird theme. It just has to happen.

He is, in truth, an indifferent falconer. It’s a sport of princes and kings, Eamon says, to fly a hawk from the hand but, despite his title and gleaming crown, Alistair had been raised as neither and birds had always made him nervous. The first bird he’d handled had been Teagan’s merlin, small thing for his small hands, hooded and quiet as a kitten.

“Eamon always said you had to trust them to come back,” Alistair says, speaking into the dusty air of the empty mews, “Cailan never did. He picked hounds, every time.” He smiles, “Fereldan to his boots.”

Gwydion looks back at him, quiet in the liquid afternoon sun. Garrick’s claws scratch at the floor of the mews as the dog noses around, picking up the old scent of birds long gone, storing the place away as a safe haven for his master. Alistair had brought him down looking for Gwydion, knowing how his old companion tended to retreat into his feathers when he wanted to be alone.

“Dogs are more loyal,” Gwydion says, “And a hawk never loves its falconer.” He relaxes against the doorframe, long and lean and looking at home, “Do you need me, Alistair?”

“Oh, always,” Alistair says with a grin, “But I have something for you.”

He reaches into his pocket and draws out a glass phial hanging from a leather string. This close to Gwydion, the phylactery glows.

“How did you get that?” Gwydion asks, and his gloved fingers only brush it, as if he’s afraid of it.

“Pulled some strings. I used to be a Templar, remember?”

Alistair kneels and slides the phylactery under Gwydion’s heel. Gwydion doesn’t hesitate in pressing his whole weight down against the ground and the glass crunches as it shatters, blood spreading on the stone of the step, darkening in the cool air. Gwydion sighs and sways and his fingers settle in Alistair’s hair.

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted that,” he says, and he grinds his heel down again, for good measure. Alistair grins up at him.

“I think I can guess,” he says, pulling himself upright, hands anchored on Gwydion’s narrow waist.

“The Chantry won’t like it.” Gwydion lifts his foot and the crushed glass glitters in the sun, much of it coloured with red, “That there is a mage here, living unfettered.”

“Damn the Chantry,” Alistair says, and the blasphemy tingles on his tongue, “You’re a Warden, and my best friend besides. I trust you. I don’t need to tie you down; I know you’ll come back.”

“If not to you, then no one.”

“Not even Zevran?”

Gwydion laughs then, and Alistair is shamefully still unused to the sound of it.

“Eventually Zevran,” he says, “For now, _he’s_ the one who has to come back to _me_.”

 

* * *

 

He finds that he makes few choices that the whole court approves of. Some look at his choice of bird and cluck their tongues and mutter under their breaths that it’s no suitable choice for a _king_ ; others see and they laugh, because they see a kite as fitting. Scavenging, bastard bird for the scavenging, bastard prince. And beyond them, there’s those who don’t care, because birds are all the same to them.

Gwydion sits on a perch beside him, preening in the summer sun, one wing extended and showing off those white flight feathers. The sun gleams on the rust red of his back. He has no jesses and no bells, because Alistair’s not in the habit of binding his friends, not matter what shape they choose to take. He comes and goes as he pleases, forked tail angling so he can turn lazy circles overhead.

“Remarkable bird,” Empress Celene says, “You have him trained like a dog.”

“We’ve worked a lot together,” Alistair replies, “Travelled Ferelden together. He’s loyal to me, in his way.”

“And you to him, no doubt,” Celene says, voice honey sweet, and he knows that she sees him as quaint and rustic, far beneath her Val Royeaux sophistication.

Gwydion considers her with one grey eye. He’s dwarfed by Celene’s eagle; Alistair’s already seen the empress’s bird sizing him up, just as Gwydion sizes up Celene, and the horrible image of his chancellor being eaten by an Orlesian eagle flashes through his mind.

He stands and beckons to Gwydion, inviting the other to his hand. Gwydion lands on his gloved hand, accepts the meat he’s offered, and ignores Celene’s raised eyebrow and unimpressed huff. If a bird could smile, Alistair would swear Gwydion is.

 

* * *

 

Alistair knows when Zevran comes back because Gwydion pulls away from him, like the sea from the shore, drawn away by the moon. They see each other only for court matters, and Gwydion is tired and content and smells of night air. Zevran lingers in the court and everyone who doesn’t know him looks at him with suspicion, with fear, this strange elf with the strange magic he weaves on their court chancellor.

He hardly minds, not these days; playing the game alone is easier, now that he knows the rules, and if anyone needs a distraction, it’s Gwydion. Zevran’s more than happy to oblige.

Alistair retreats to his offices, sits at his desk with Garrick’s heavy head on his knee. His desk is littered with letters, and he notices that some of them are explicitly for Gwydion, pressed with the wax seal of the First Enchanter. Jowan lingers, always shadowing one of them, and Alistair keeps one ear turned to his enchanting, since he’s been known to lose himself in it. So they settle into a rhythm together, with Alistair reading and answering his letters and Jowan tapping away at his enchantment workbench. Jowan does everything in order and Alistair counts the hours by his routine, ticking down and away…

He’s woken by a cool hand on his face, familiar enough with Gwydion’s touch by now that he doesn’t flinch. He rubs at his face, ink coming off on his hand, and notices too late that Jowan is gone and the candle’s burning low.

“Thought you were with Zev,” he says, pushing away the ruined letter, “Jowan and I got things done.”

“So I see.” Gwydion picks up the letter from the Circle, “Who needs advisors, hmm?”

“We talked about all of these before.”

“I know.”

“Where is Zevran, anyway?”

“Talking to the kitchen staff. He’s trying to convince them on the finer points on Antivan cooking; apparently, Fereldan food is worse than paying penance.”

He breaks the seal on the Circle letter and Alistair watches his expression change as he reads, from his Zevran-induced contentment to a frustrated frown. He traces one of the scars on Gwydion’s forearm, uncovered for once and still dark despite its age.

“What do they want?” Alistair asks, and he finally stretches, popping the knot out of his back.

“Enchanter business. Because apparently saying no multiple times is not enough.”

“If you go, don’t go alone,” Alistair says, because he has a horrible image of Gwydion being locked away again, the idea making his stomach lurch after being together for so long, “Even if it’s just to get them off your back.”

“They couldn’t keep me, Alistair.”

There’s pride there, confidence that nothing the Circle could do could contain him, and Alistair’s known him long enough and seen enough to know it’s not unfounded.

But he’s also seen how even falcons can be trapped, thinks of the brand that still ties Jowan to the Circle and he bites back his worries because he’s certainly not Gwydion’s keeper.

 

* * *

 

Kirkwall’s chantry goes up in flames. Alistair spends much of the following week on tenterhooks, though Denerim’s clergy aren’t worried. No concern of theirs, the Grand Cleric says, what happens to her counterpart over the sea; Kirkwall is degenerate, on the verge of collapse for years, and the destruction of its chantry would only be the excuse the Divine needs to sanction flexing her muscle over the place. Alistair feels a sense of alarm at his Grand Cleric’s total lack of concern but, in truth, his twitchiness has little to do with chantries and Champions and mages who may have once been Grey Wardens.

It’s a relief when Teagan invites him out to Redcliffe.

“It’s how they are,” he says, when Alistair tells him about the Grand Cleric, “It’s all politics, just with a different uniform.”

Alistair skips stones across the surface of the lake, relieved to finally be alone with someone away from court. His mood is sour, despite the quiet of the woods and the lake, despite his uncle’s good company. Kirkwall and its Champion weigh on his mind, Gwydion’s absence heavier still.

“We’ll have to be ready to help people,” he says, “If people from Kirkwall need somewhere safe.”

Teagan makes a sound in the back of his throat, “Repayment for their own hospitality, surely.”

“We’ll show them how it’s done,” Alistair says, “Besides, I can’t in good conscious turn away people who need help, even if they’d have done the same to me.”

He steps out from the tree cover and immediately hears a whistling call overhead. A shadow passes and the red kite drops down, flying close before turning away sharply. Gwydion follows him across the meadow, wing beats deep and sweeping, careening through the air.

“Hello again,” he says, as Gwydion swoops past Teagan and comes to land on Alistair’s raised arm. He runs his free hand through Gwydion’s feathers, “It’s very nice to see you too.”

 

* * *

 

They argue, eventually. It starts between Teagan and Gwydion, over mages and refugees and what becomes of Redcliffe. Alistair bears it, because he understands them both; the mages are Gwydion’s people, as much as Redcliffe is Teagan’s, and both are Alistair’s subjects.

It’s the jab at Teagan that breaks Alistair’s patience; jab at Teagan and Isolde and Connor’s parentage. It cuts, because Alistair’s own parentage had been used as a bludgeon against him the same way. It ends with a shouting match and Gwydion leaving Denerim during the night, leaving to go to the mysterious west.

“You made a mistake, choosing the arl over him.”

“Don’t lecture me. You picked Orlais.”

Morrigan smiles, “‘Twas only an observation, Alistair, not a condemnation.”

Even a decade later, Alistair cannot trust that smile, sweet and barbed as it had always been; Leliana says Morrigan has changed, and it might be true for _Leliana_ but he feels Morrigan enjoys needling him too much to soften around him. She watches him, officially on a mission from the Inquisition to plunder Gwydion’s library, and bursts a cherry between her teeth.

“Perhaps it is a good thing,” she says, “For both of you. Don’t pine so much; I never did.”

“And you don’t have any regrets for leaving without a word?”

Her smile shifts slightly and he can see her turning her thoughts over in her head, just as she turns his silver hawking bell over in her hands. She plucks the cherry stone from between her teeth and sets it neatly down in front of her, pressing it against the wood, before she looks at him again.

“I can never regret.”

 

* * *

 

Almost two years go by before they’re together again. Almost two years of a half empty throne, an empty place at Alistair’s right hand, and a hole in his life where Gwydion should be. He tries Gwydion’s methods, papering over it by engulfing himself entirely in court, but it doesn’t work as well for him.

He’s finishing up with his morning council when he’s told there’s someone waiting for him. Garrick follows him along the corridors, paws heavy on the floor; he must be curious, eager, to leave his post at Jowan’s side. He rounds the corner and through the doors to the great hall, skidding to a stop almost instantly.

Gwydion stands in a shaft of sunlight and he’s more worn now, exhausted by travel and his long search. He looks uncertain, of his place and of Alistair’s reaction. He opens his mouth to speak but Alistair’s already crossed the room and swept him up in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and he clings to Alistair, voice muffled by Alistair’s shoulder.

Alistair says nothing. He’s relieved that Gwydion’s back, that he’s safe and they’re together again. He rocks back slightly, lifting Gwydion off his feet.

“I’ll try and forgive you,” he says, “Hopeless mage.” He hoists Gwydion higher, and Gwydion clings to his shoulders, “I have a whole list of penitence. I knew you’d come back.”

“I didn’t know if you’d let me.”

“But you trusted me enough to try,” Alistair says. He sets Gwydion down again, “It’s so good to see you.”

He puts Gwydion to work on letters to Orlais, all in preparation for a council called to discuss the Inquisition. He watches Gwydion work, answers his questions about what’s happened in his absence, about the Inquisitor, and is grateful for Eamon’s enduring advice: _trust them to come back._


End file.
